Her statement comes a couple of days after she introduced the Banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Bill, 2019 in Lok Sabha on Friday.

Days after creating a buzz with her red ‘bahi-khata’ to present her maiden budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday said that she chose not to carry the usual suitcase because the Modi government is not a “suitcase government” referring to the unsavoury deals that is often associated with the exchanging of suitcases. However, this is not the first time that the minister is addressing the symbolism of her choice. Earlier she had said that she chose the ‘bahi -khata’ to let go the “colonial” traditions.

“For Budget 2019, I didn’t carry a suitcase. We aren’t a suitcase-carrying govt as suitcase also denotes something else, suitcase-taking, suitcase-giving. Modi ji’s govt is not suitcase govt,” said Sitharaman while delivering the inaugural address at the International Business Conference of Nagarathars 2019 in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, news agency ANI reported. The minister was the chief guest at the Chennai event.

Her statement comes a couple of days after she introduced the Banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Bill, 2019 in Lok Sabha on Friday. The bill is drafted to facilitate a comprehensive system to ban the unregulated deposit schemes, besides the deposits taken in the ordinary course of business, and also to protect the interests of depositors and for other matters connected related to them.

The finance minister seems to have quickly gotten comfortable in the swing of things since taking charge of the finance ministry from Arun Jaitley and giving the charge of the defence ministry to former Home Minister Rajnath Singh after the thumping victory in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

While presenting the Union Budget 2019 Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said the target was to push India to become a $5 trillion economy by 2025. India’s anti-corruption authority Lokpal received over Rs Rs 101.29 crore Budget allocation for 2019-20, while Rs 35.55 crore outlay has been allocated for the watchdog Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) for the same year. The first Modi government which had come to power promising to battle corruption and bring back black money stashed overseas, in November 2016 had introduced demonetisation to curb black money and corruption. A year later, the NDA government introduced GST to replace all indirect taxes on goods and services by the Indian central and state governments.